[Adium-devl] Website design

[Colin Barrett]

On Sep 30, 2008, at 9:56 PM, Paul Wilde wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> Was just playing around in Photoshop, and decided to throw around a  
> concept for Adium, seeing as how there's a trac page about a  
> possible re-design at: http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/HomepageRe-design
>
> Tell me what you guys think. :)
>
> http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/3977/adiumuy7.jpg

It's true that there is a trac page about that, but it's from quite a  
while ago.

This is a good start. Couple comments:

- "Donate" and "Powered by" links at the bottom don't really look  
clickable. Also there are a couple more people we need to give  
shoutouts too, like CacheFly and NR for being so gracious with their  
bandwidth and resources.

- Body text is a little cramped.  Make it bigger / increase the line  
height.

- People usually don't like reading prose (See golden-braeburn.com for  
a great example of having way too much text on your page). Apple's  
technique of a clever heading + a paragraph of text is pretty  
effective. I'm all for ripping it off shamelessly.

- White on light green is kinda hard to read

- It's not obvious if you don't read the text on the page (like most  
people on the internet) what Adium does. The icons on the old page did  
a great job of that.

- Maybe using a question in the header isn't the best idea. "Why  
should I download Adium?" "I don't know, why are you asking me! *close*"

- Donate to Adium is not above the fold. It's barely even emphasized.  
Not that it is on the current site but the new one should be better.

I do like that the icon is next to the download button. The download  
link is a button (people like to click buttons) on the right side of  
the page, which is according to people in the know about usability.

If we're serious about a redesign we should start collecting metrics  
on our current site to find out what works and what doesn't, and so we  
can make sure that our changes to the site have a positive impact.

Anyone else have thoughts?
-Colin


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